In this ever interconnected world, by 2020, there would be 50 billion potentially connected devices, while the human population is expected to be around 7.6 billion. Considering that approximately 60% of the population has one or more connected devices, the average connected devices per user may be expected to be at least ten. In some cases, as in a command center, the number of devices linked to a single user may even exceed 100. Such phenomenal numbers of connected devices require massive, ultra-dense and hybrid wireless networks including accesses like Wi-Fi, macro cellular networks, small cells and their variants, peer-to-peer communication such as Bluetooth, infra-red, and other low-power local access networks. Further, each set of connected devices may form their own Internet of Things (IoT) network, requiring communication within the nodes in the IoT network, and to other IoT networks which may be different in nature (based on services, topology, communication protocols, connectivity, etc.), and also may be located geographically far apart.
Such arrangement of massive interconnected devices imposes numerous constraints and challenges, such as, assignment and maintenance of identity of each IoT device in the network, maintenance of connections and different sessions for each IoT device, IoT network-context-aware communication within and across various types of IoT networks while keeping the communication overheads within limits, maintenance of connections across heterogeneous devices while maintaining mobility of the IoT devices, and fulfillment of security, reliability, priority and criticality of devices and their diverse communication needs. Moreover, in an IoT application scenario, existing communication network will need to maintain a large number of device-specific connections and sessions for each IoT subscriber (a subscriber who has a set of connected IoT devices). This will be overhead for the network and for the IoT subscriber as well.
One of the conventional systems tries to solve the above problems by providing the following solutions: IoT device connectivity to mobile network may be enabled through IoT module in UE (Mobile User Device/User Equipment), IoT server and IoT device may communicate with pre-registered channel id, and each IoT device may be attached to an exclusive channel and each channel would always needs to stay on. However, this conventional system has many limitations that include: all IoT devices may not have the capability to run the IoT module, over-dependence on UE (single point of failure) for initial registration and resource allocation, lack of scalability (as a smartphone may not be able to cater to a lot of devices in a timely manner), and downloading of the IoT module on the devices may also be considerably delayed.
Another conventional system proposes an IPv6 scheme of addressing for Machine-Type Communications (MTC), and decoupling the MTC server from 3GPP network architecture. However, the proposed mechanism is based on the MTC-InterWorking Function (MTC-IWF) and fails to describe a mechanism that addresses aspects such as communication between IoT devices across different IoT networks. The system has additional limitations that include: unsuitability for real-time and critical communications, limited connectivity options and unavailability of alternate mechanisms for critical or priority communication during abnormal conditions, additional resource required for setting up of appropriate channel (which may introduce additional delay and scalability problems), and failure to provide support for multiple connectivity options.